Maeve
by Labyrinth01
Summary: Fritz opens up and tells Brenda about a long-ago dark encounter with the supernatural that still haunts him.


_Author's Notes: This story was written for The Closer Forum Halloween Fanfic Challenge. It is a little different than any story I've written before. The subject matter is not necessarily Halloween-specific. And who doesn't like creepy fanfic stories all year 'round? _

_FYI, the name "Maeve" is an Irish name derived from mythology and rhymes with "pave." (I mispronounced Hermione's name in my head for the first three Harry Potter books, and it was really hard to correct when I learned the right pronunciation. I want to spare you the same pain.) _

_Thanks to ManateeMamma on help in picking out a location for this story. Make sure you read her new story, The Red Ghost._

* * *

Fritz leaned against the doorframe and chuckled at the sight before him. "You are never going to find it, so you might as well give up," he said.

Brenda pulled her head out of the top kitchen cupboard and nearly fell off the chair she was standing on. "Fritz, you scared me half to death! I thought you were in the bedroom changin' your clothes." With her face red from exertion and her hair rumpled, she looked like a frustrated child.

Fritz walked over to her and held out his hand to help her off the chair, which she accepted reluctantly.

"Why do you hide the Halloween candy, why? All I want is one teeny little Snickers bar is all," she whined.

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her messy head. "Oh, I learned my lesson the first year we lived together. I went to put the candy in the bowl before the Trick-or-Treaters were due, and all the bags were half empty. I had to run out to the grocery store at the last minute and get more candy. And the only candy left on the shelves was the crappy kind." He put his hand over his heart. "Those poor little boys and girls, stuck getting Sweet Tarts because you ate all the good stuff."

"Hey, I was workin' a real big case then! I needed that chocolate more than those kids did." Brenda turned and looked at him defiantly. "I will find where you hid the stache, Fritz. I promise I won't eat all of it, but I'm entitled to a taste. Halloween is only two days away, how much can I eat before then?" She turned around and walked over to the sink and dropped to her knees, opening a cabinet and rummaging through the cleaning supplies.

_I should tell her it's all at work,_ Fritz thought. _But watching her toss the house is so much fun. _He had bought the treats on his lunch break a few days ago and decided it would stay at the office until the evening of Halloween, since it simply wasn't safe around Brenda. Last year, he thought he was pretty clever hiding it in the trunk of his car. But when Brenda swiped his keys, snuck out in the middle of the night, and stole a bag of Charleston Chews, he wasn't amused.

He crossed the kitchen and putt the chair she had used as a stepladder back where it belonged. "It's not down there, Brenda. Up you go." Once again he offered her hand; this time, she ignored it.

"I'm going to get you for this, Fritz Howard," she growled as she got to her feet.

She was rolling out the drama, so it was a good time for a distraction. "Hey, you have worked nonstop the past week," he said. "I've been looking forward to having a night to spend together. So why don't you pour yourself a glass of wine and join me on the couch so we can talk, okay?" He caressed her arm.

Brenda gave him the look that told Fritz he had successfully diverted a meltdown. It was somewhere between "I really love this man" and "I'm pissed off I can't stay mad at him." It was patent Brenda, and he positively basked in it.

She nodded. "Alright, alright. I have missed you this past week too, honey. And time with you is almost as good as a candy bar." She reached up to the cabinet to grab a wine glass, and looked saucily over her shoulder. "_Almost_."

* * *

Brenda lay in the crook of Fritz's arm, her head against his chest, as the two reclined on the couch. One of his arms was draped around her, the other periodically stroked her hair. Neither of them wanted to move. It was well past midnight, and they had been lying around and talking for hours. A certain languidness had crept in, borne from the lateness of the hour, and it loosened their tongues. They talked of anything and nothing, as boundaries and guards that were usually sentinel during the had now disappeared in the witching hour. Times like these with Brenda were so rare that Fritz didn't want it to end.

"Favorite Halloween costume," she challenged him lightly.

"Hmmm, I have to think about that. Probably the time I went as Luke Skywalker. I had this awesome lightsaber, and my mom sewed me a white Jedi costume just like the one he wore in The Empire Strikes Back. I was adorable."

Brenda snorted. "Fritz, Luke Skywalker was blond."

"Your point being…"

"You are not blond. You should have gone as Han Solo." Brenda sighed. "Mmmm. Harrison Ford. Mmmmmmm."

Fritz lightly smacked her hand. "You are in the arms of your adoring husband and you are thinking about another man? I'm offended."

"Get over it. I know you probably have the 'Princess Leia and the gold bikini' fantasy like all men."

He laughed. Princess Leia was indeed an adolescent fantasy of his, but Brenda didn't need to know that.

"Buy a gold bikini, Brenda, and I'll let you know."

"Don't hold your breath." She shifted in his arms to get more comfortable.

"Okay then, I guess I can cross off one Halloween costume of yours. So tell me what your favorite costume was."

Brenda thought for awhile. "Good question. Mama used to do all kinds of sewin' to make sure I had the best costumes. I went as a Barbie once." Brenda laughed at the memory.

"Did you have a Ken doll with you?"

"I was only nine, so no," she said. "I went as all kinds of girlie things, like princesses and fairies." She wrinkled her nose. "I never liked the scary costumes, the witches and vampires and such. And Mama, she was real superstitious, she wouldn't let me go in a getup like that even if you wanted to."

"Your mother was superstitious?" He knew Willie Rae was only moderately religious, so he didn't see her as the type to toss salt over her shoulder or to avoid black cats on principle. She seemed to practical for that.

Brenda nodded. "Oh yea. My Grandma Anna was from New Orleans and they are all kinds of creepy down there. Grandma used to tell me all these scary stories when I was a kid, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night cryin' from a bad dream, and when I told Mama that my nightmare was about somethin' Grandma told me, she'd get so mad. One time I heard her on the phone practically yellin at Grandma, 'she's too young to know these things, you are frightenin' her to death.'"

"What things?" Fritz asked. "Was your grandmother teaching you how to raise a zombie?"

"No, no," she chuckled. "Zombies, ghosts, all that nonsense…I loved my grandmother, but it always amazed me she thought any of that crap was true." She waived her hand in dismissal.

"Mama believed in ghosts too, told me once the house she grew up in was haunted. I told Mama that was the biggest bunch of crap and she was too smart to believe in such stupid things." Brenda paused. 'I might have hurt her feelings a little, " she said softly.

_A little_? Fritz thought. Brenda wasn't the queen of tact. Did she really outright dismiss her mother and grandmother's ghost stories without considering that they might be true . He didn't know why that surprised him, but it did.

"So Brenda, you really don't believe in ghosts?""You're kidding, right? Of course I don't, for heaven's sake! Everythin' had a rational explanation. People just see ghosts and vampires and monsters when there are things in their lives that they can't control, and they have to blame somebody." She untangled herself from Fritz's arms and sat up, squinting at him. "There's no way you believe in ghosts and the like, do you, Fritz?"

_Don't go there_, he thought, but his mind pulled him back to a chilly morning in DC when he was getting ready for work. He looked up from knotting his tie and saw his mother standing in front of him, smiling, looking happier than she had in a long time. He turned his head when the phone rang, and when he looked back, she was gone. It was Claire who called, letting him know his mother had finally succumbed to cancer in a hospital 200 miles away. Fritz held this memory close to his heart, treasuring his mother's goodbye as one of his most sacred moments of his life. He never told anyone about seeing his dead mother, not even Claire, who of course would believe him. And he wasn't about to tell Brenda, who probably wouldn't. He would never sully such a gift by subjecting it to conjecture that it never happened.

"You know what Shakespeare said on the topic, Brenda. 'There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy.'" He hoped that would dodge the question.

"Huh?" She wrinkled her nose. "I didn't ask you to quote Hamlet, Fritz. I asked you if you believed in the supernatural."

"Why all of a sudden do I feel like Mulder and Scully?"

"Who?"

"You can correctly identify the Shakespearean play I'm quoting from, but you don't know the X-files? Jeez, Brenda, turn on the TV every once in awhile."

"What can I say, I'm more cultured than you. And don't think I don't know when you are tryin' to dodge a question, Fritz. I do this for a livin,' you know. I can tell when someone is bein' evasive."

_What happened to our light banter?_ he thought.. "It's a complicated thing to say yes or no to, Brenda. I mean, you've been a cop for a long time. Haven't there been some cases when the evidence just didn't add up? When there were clues you couldn't explain no matter how hard you tried? Maybe there are things in the world we just don't understand. I keep an open mind, that's all I'm saying."

Brenda shook her head, her long blonde hair falling around her face. "I'm surprised to hear the no nonsense FBI Agent Howard say that, I really am."

"What can I say, Brenda, I have layers." He reached for her face and leaned in for a kiss. He hoped to distract her and move away from this uneasy topic with a little nonverbal communication in the bedroom. She pulled back and scrutinized him.

"You mentioned cases that might have a supernatural element to them," she said, putting a hand on his chest to keep him at bay. "You ever had one of these cases? One that defied normal explanation?" Brenda raised an eyebrow at him.

He shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "Why do you ask?"

"Cuz you brought it up. Cuz you aren't the type to believe in ghost stories, so I'm wonderin' if you had some type of experience that made you see things a little differently."

He didn't want to answer her. He didn't want to pull the story out of the dark recesses of his brain, where he had buried it years before, and watch Brenda put it under her interrogator's lens for examination. He might end up looking like an idiot, a drunken fool so besotted by alcohol at the time that he had lost his grip on reality. No, he didn't want to bring that up with her, not now, not ever.

Her keen brown eyes were fixated on him, waiting for a reply he refused to give. "You did, didn't you, Fritz? Somethin' strange happened to you, and you are debatin' whether or not you want to tell me about it." She poked him the arm.

"Hey stop that," he said, grabbing her hand.

She pulled free from his grasp. "I'll keep pokin' you until you tell me the truth. Somethin' weird happened to you, didn't it?"

He shrugged his shoulders but didn't answer.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said dryly. "So why won't you tell me?" There was an edge of hurt in her voice.

He sighed. "It's something that happened long ago, and I don't like to talk about it. So drop it, okay?"

He got off the couch and walked toward the bedroom. Their evening of cuddling was clearly over.

"Fritz Howard!" Brenda yelled. Fritz jumped and turned around. Brenda had stood up too, her face red, arms crossed over her chest. "You get very mad when I walk out on conversations, and now you are doin' the same thing. Get back here!" She stamped her foot.

_Holy crap, all I want to do is go to bed and forget we ever strayed on this stupid topic._ He slowly walked back to the couch and plopped down resentfully.

"Why are we fighting about this, Brenda? It's late and I'm tired."

"We are fightin' about it because there seems to be a double standard. You are always on me about sharin' stuff, but when the shoe's on the other foot, you clam up. That's not fair."

He rubbed his face. "We aren't talking about something that's important to our relationship .. It's just something that happened a long time ago that I don't want to talk about it. It's no big deal."

"It is to me," she said." You don't want to tell me because you don't trust me, do you? You don't trust me not to laugh at you." She stuck out her lower lip in a definite pout.

"No, I don't," he said. " I don't want to be mocked. Not if I share something that's very personal and confusing."

Brenda sat down next to him and placed her hands over his. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I guess I do judge, and that's wrong. But I really want to hear what happened to you, Fritz. I promise I won't laugh or make fun. Please?"

She looked so earnest that he couldn't help but believe her. "Only if you tell me why you want to know so badly," he said.

She looked down at her hands resting on his. "I'm curious," Brenda said. "You never mentioned anything like this before, and I guess I want to know those parts of you that are still a mystery to me."

Fritz didn't know what to say to that. There was a lot of his past that he didn't like to bring up, not to Brenda or to anyone else. And this—this tale he has to tell—had never been told to anyone. But his resolve lessened in the face of her determination, and he finally said, "okay, okay, I'll tell you. But I swear if you call me crazy or make faces, I'm going to be really pissed off. Okay?"

"Deal. I won't be a jerk, Fritz, I promise."

He looked at her intense, beautiful face and told himself he was crazy to dig up this old story for her to scrutinize, but he never could say no to her. "This is going to take awhile,, Brenda. So get comfortable, and put your skepticism away." He looked at her, hoping she would give into fatigue and he could let this twisted part of his past lie stay in its grave. Alas, she looked wide awake and met his gaze, wordlessly nodding encouragement.

"I met my friend Jim when I was a newbie at Metro," he began. "I took a series of courses he was teaching at Quantico. When he found out I was from Jersey like him we bonded instantly, and he became my friend and mentor. Jim was the one who eventually persuaded me to apply to Quantico to become a Special Agent like him. Over the years I got to know his family really well." He chuckled to himself. "His wife Kathleen was constantly trying to fix me up with younger friends of hers. I was a project to her. Getting me married off was her life's goal." He allowed himself to drift back in years and think about the people he cared about back then, all such good friends to him, all since scattered from his life, some by choice, some by circumstances, and some by tragedy.

"Like you would ever need help gettin' a date," Brenda said, interrupting his revelry. "You leave women droolin' after you when you walk past, you're so handsome." She brushed his cheek and he caught her fingers, kissing them lightly before releasing them. His story was about to get dark, and holding hands, an act so innocent and apple pie, seemed…wrong.

He cleared his throat. "Jim and Kathleen had a daughter named Maeve, who I first met when she was around nine. God, was she cute." He paused. "I always thought if I had a little girl…" he caught himself. Brenda always bristled at the mention of children.

"Maeve," Brenda said slowly. "That's an unusual name. Not sure I've ever heard it before."

"It's Irish," he said. He spelled it out for her. "Maeve hated it because no one pronounced it correctly, but I thought it was pretty."

"I agree. Go on, Fritz," Brenda said.

"She was that perfect combination of shy and smart, and for some reason she really took a liking to me. When I would go over to Jim's house, I'd see her lurking in the back hallway, too shy to come out and say hello, but with a game in her hand she just had to play with me. Jim said she would ask him all the time, 'when is Mr. Fritz . coming over?' She was adorable."

"Like I said, you're popular with the ladies," Brenda said.

He smiled. "Even when she became a teenager and her dad said she no longer talked to him or Kathleen, she made a point to come out of hiding when I was over. Maeve is the one who taught me how to chess. Like I said, a smart girl. And she was beautiful too. She had the most striking red hair, the color that women who dye their hair go for but are never able to make it look real. It was a shiny deep red with lots of copper in it. You could pick Maeve out of a crowd of a thousand people with that red hair."

"She sounds like Rudolph," Brenda said.

"I wish," he said softly. _Maybe I could have found her through the fog._ His next words were heavy and reluctant coming out of his mouth: "When Maeve was 15, she was abducted from her home."

"Oh no," Brenda breathed. She had had terrible experiences with missing children, and he knew she was imagining the worst. _You have no idea_, he thought.

"Yea, it was awful. Even though she was technically too old to be a critical missing, the Bureau pulled out all of the stops for one of its own. I was put on the case, and it was…well, there was no words for what it was. I just remember seeing Jim, this big, tough guy, sobbing on his wife's shoulder. And in the end, we didn't do anything. We couldn't find her."

"What evidence did you have?" Brenda asked. Fritz could tell the procedural aspect of her story piqued her interest.

He held open his empty hands. "A whole lot of nothing. She disappeared sometime between the time when her mother kissed her goodnight and when she came into the room to wake Maeve up for school, so we assume she got taken from her bedroom. But there was no signs of a struggle, and no signs of a forced entry via the window. No strange fingerprints around her bedroom. One neighbor, though, said she saw a man climb up the side of the house in the middle of the night, but didn't call the police because she thought maybe it was a hallucination from her sleeping pills. Maeve's room was on the second floor, so we explored that lead thoroughly. But like I said, there was no evidence."

"Fritz, I assume y'all considered the possibility she ran away?"

"Of course. She didn't have a boyfriend, so that wasn't an issue. We talked to her friends, and they all said Maeve didn't talk about running away, nor were there any problems at home. Her two best friends had noticed she was a little different the week before her disappearance, though. The said she looked sick and seemed a little out of it. They just thought she was getting the flu."

"And what about suicide ? She sounded like she could have been depressed."

"We dragged every body of water nearby. There was no note no missing pills, no blood, and of course, no body. And before you ask, we went through all of Jim's past cases to see if someone was out for revenge. Nothing panned out."

"Huh. Anyone reported seein' her?"

He nodded. "Yea, a few people. We got some scattered tips about young girls her age being spotted as far away as Arizona. Most of the witnesses had just seen a grainy black and white picture of her on the news, so as soon as we got a color photograph in front of them, her hair was so distinct they would take one look and realize they hadn't seen her after all."

"How frustratin' for you."

"For all of us. It was like she just disappeared into thin air. Slowly the command center shut down, and then one by one we all got reassigned, although the case is still open, of course."

"What happened to your friend Jim?" she asked softly.

"His wife left him," Fritz said. "About a year after Maeve went missing. Took Jim's son Colm with her. I'd see Jim around the Bureau, and he looked…" Fritz struggled for the right word... "haunted. Like a hollowed out shell. I tried to be his friend, but I think he looked at me and saw that horrible command center in his front yard. He eventually left the Bureau without me even knowing." Guilt spread through Fritz like a fever, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he had tried hard enough to connect with Jim, or if he was too choked by his own remorse over never finding Maeve that he couldn't look his old friend in in the eye. It was easier to try and drink away all those feelings if he didn't have Jim on the bar stool next to him.

"So, what happened next?" Brenda practically whispered, breaking the silence. He hadn't realized he had gone quiet. "That doesn't seem like it's the end of Maeve's story."

He laughed dryly. "Oh no, not by a long shot." He got off the couch, suddenly too restless to sit. He ran his hands through his hair and looked out the window, wishing for all the world that he wasn't telling Brenda this story. _No_, he thought. _What I really wish is that I didn't have this story to tell._

"Three years later," he said after a few more minutes of silence, "I was on assignment in Mississippi in a small town near Biloxi named St. Jude's Creek. My ASAC was mad at me for showing up to an important meeting hung over, so he punished me by sending me to this godforsaken place where they had just unearthed the remains of a few dozen people when the town broke ground for a new high school. All different ages, some dead as long as 50 years, others just a couple of years old. They called for federal assistance for identification and, of course, to find out who did this."

Brenda snapped her fingers. "I remember hearin' about this case! They never did find who was responsible, did they?"

"No. Not that we didn't try. God, it was a miserable job. It was September and hot as hell. I had to go door to door and interview people who wanted nothing to do with a Yankee from the government. I was greeted a couple of times with a shotgun aimed at my chest. And nobody knew nothing, at least that's what they told me. They just wanted the bodies removed and the strangers gone so they could get back to their lives. It was extremely frustrating."

"Small towns in the South are like that, they don't welcome outsiders," Brenda murmured.

"You'd think they would make an exception for strangers trying to figure out why there were a bunch of dead bodies buried in their backyard, but whatever," Fritz said. "After the first day of this less than stellar Southern hospitality, I needed a drink. I was lucky it wasn't a dry county, but I still had to drive about several miles from the hotel to find a bar. And it wasn't…quite what I expected." He crossed his arms and frowned, an old chill settling in his spine.

"How so? No honkey tonk music or mechanical bulls? Waitresses have all their own teeth?" He looked over at Brenda, who was biting her lip to keep from smiling.

"Funny. I guess I expected a place to be a little friendlier, which is strange, considering how I was treated by the people in the town. The bar was more modern than I expected, but what struck me as strange was—" he knew this was going to sound crazy—"the people who worked there staff almost seemed scared. Of me, I guess, or just in general, I couldn't tell. The woman behind the bar was hesitant to even come near me to take my order, and the bartender watched my every move. And when they weren't staring at me like they expected me to start shooting up the place, they kept looking around, like they were expecting someone else they didn't want to show up." He shook his head. "It was eerie. But I wanted a drink in the worst way, so I did my best to ignore them and focused on my Scotch, which went down very smoothly." He paused again and walked across the room and back, aware that what he was about to say next might change Brenda's opinion of him forever.

"I had just started in on my second Scotch—so I was sober, I want to point out— when I caught sight of something in the large mirror behind the bar. It startled me so bad I put my drink down and turned around, thinking I must be seeing things, but I wasn't. I saw a flash of bright red hair on a girl walking away from me. Maeve's hair."

He had Brenda's attention now. She sat on the couch, her arms wrapped her knees, her mouth hanging slightly open. _I have to get through this before she starts asking a million questions_, he thought.

"I followed the girl down the hall towards the bathroom, and then, on pure instinct, called out 'Maeve.' Of course it couldn't be her, but I had to see the girl's face, I just had to. She was five feet away from me and she turned around, and—" he paused and looked over at Brenda, "it was her. It was Maeve. "

Brenda's face clouded with confusion. "How—" she sputtered. He waved her off.

"There is time for 'hows' later. At that moment, I'm looking at the face of a girl I was sure was dead. And it was definitely Maeve, and yet she looked so different. So different." Maeve's face from that long-ago night floated in front of him.

"Her features were the same as I remembered-green eyes, very fair skin. But she was so thin she was skeletal. And _pale._ I swear, I could have picked her up and held her to the light and I'd be able to see through her. My first thought was that she was using drugs. And then I thought…I don't know what I thought. I just remember standing in that back hallway and staring at her like she was some sort of miracle. Finally she spoke. Her voice was lower and harsher than I remembered, and she said, 'why are you here?' And then I just started going on about how much everyone missed her back home and how hard everyone had been looking for her. And you know, her expression never changed. This girl whose laugh used to light up a room just had the blankest look on her face. It chilled me."

"I'll bet," Brenda murmured.

"As I was looking at her, so skinny and pale, it dawned on me. She didn't look any old than she did when she was abducted. She was 18 by then, but she still looked 15. Something felt very, very wrong. I remember actually feeling cold standing in that stuffy bar. It's like the temperature dropped 20 degrees when I saw Maeve." He stopped pacing. "I finally shut up and waited for an explanation. And she just stared back at me and said, 'Maeve died a long time ago,' and turned around to leave. Well, I couldn't let her leave, no way, so I reached out and grabbed her arm. Her skin—" he subconsciously rubbed his palm on his jeans as if recoiling from her touch all over again—"felt cold and hard, like rubber. Not like normal skin at all. I didn't have a lot of time to think about it, though, because she took her hand and removed mine from her arm. And I'll tell you, I've met some strong people before, but I have never felt a grip that intense in my life. How could this tiny girl be so much stronger than me? I didn't have a long time to think about it. All of a sudden, we were surrounded by five men who I swear appeared out of nowhere. Scared the crap out of me." His heartbeat grew faster as he pictured the cold, pale men who he sensed were lethal in nature. "The one closest to Maeve looked me up and down and said, "the lady doesn't like to be touched.

"I knew I was in danger, so I looked out to the main bar for help. I couldn't see either the waitress or the bartender, and the other people in the bar were gone. I was alone, and I really didn't want to me."

"Who were they?" Brenda asked. "Drug dealers?"

_She didn't get it._ "I'm not sure, but they weren't friendly. Finally I woke up and remembered who I was, a Federal Agent, and I better start acting like it. I pulled out my badge and then said something like, 'back off, this is Maeve O'Donnell and she's a missing person' or something. And when I said her name, Maeve got this terrified look on her face, and the guy who had first spoke to me looked furious. He kept looking back and forth from Maeve to me, and .then he said to Maeve, 'so this man knows you. We can't have that. We need to take care of this problem.' And the four other men moved in closer to me, and I swear, Brenda, my heart was beating so fast."

"But why?" she said. "You were an agent, you were armed, why…"

"…because they weren't _normal_," he said, a little too harshly. He didn't mean to snap at her, but how could he convey to her how terrifying to be in the back hallway of that redneck bar staring at a dead girl, suddenly surrounded by men who made the hair on the back of his neck stand up? "As a cop you are told to trust your instincts. My instincts told me I was dealing with something I had never seen before, and I was in serious trouble."

"Okay," Brenda said, subdued. "Go on, honey."

"These men were closing in on me, and I went to reach for my gun, and the ringleader grabbed my arm, and he was even stronger than Maeve. He reached out his other hand to my throat, but Maeve pulled him back and told him to stop. 'Leave him alone,' she said. She begged him, really. And he did. The men moved away from me, and the ringleader gestured for Maeve to follow him, never taking his eyes off of me. I swear I've never seen colder eyes in my life. Maeve turned to follow, but at the last minute, she moved really close and whispered in my ear, 'leave now and don't come back.' And then she was gone. They were all gone." A wave of nausea overtook him, and he bent over and put his hand on his stomach. He had a visceral reaction every time he thought about Maeve putting her mouth so close to him, and tonight was no different.

Brenda stood up quickly and walked toward him. "Fritzy, what's the matter? You feelin' sick? You okay?" The concern in her voice was genuine.

When he felt he could speak without vomiting, he looked at her. "I didn't tell you the worst part. When Maeve leaned close to me—" his throat constricted and he fought back bile—"her breath smelled like blood."

Brenda covered her mouth in revulsion, then put her arm around Fritz's waste and helped him over to the couch. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of ice water and a cold cloth. Fritz drank deeply and rested the cloth on his forehead while Brenda stroked his hair.

After a few minutes of silence, she asked, "did you call Jim?"

Fritz, who's mind was still entangled in the past, didn't understand the question at first. "Who?"

"Her father. Did you call Maeve's father and tell him you found her?"

Fritz took the washcloth off of his forehead and stared at her in disbelief. Wasn't she listening?

"Brenda, what exactly would I have told him? 'Jim, I found Maeve, but she still looks 15, she's ghostly pale, and I think she drinks blood? Oh, and her friends are a little scary, so be careful?'"

"You should have told him _something_. He had the right to know about his daughter."

"Know what, Brenda? Know that she was a…" he couldn't say it. He couldn't say it out loud, not to Brenda.

"She was a what, Fritz?" Brenda asked, challenge in her voice.

"Oh Brenda, I knew you wouldn't make this easy," Fritz said. "Besides, the point of telling her father became moot very quickly."

"How?"

"Two days later our team gets a call from the local PD. They found a body in the woods and thought it might be associated with the mass grave we were investigating. The medical examiner said the girl had been dead at least six months. There were no fingertips to get prints from, so they got dental x-rays and ran them through the system. And they came back with a hit—Maeve O'Donnell."

Brenda's head whipped up. "What? But you said dead for…"

"…six months. Yea. And the ME found all kinds of strange things on her autopsy. Her body was desiccated, like it had been dried out, but St. Jude's is swampy and humid. She was severely anemic and it looked like she had been starved for a long time before she died. The ME said her internal organs practically dissolved into dust when she touched them, and she'd never seen anything like it. And there was hardly any blood from her wound."

"What wound?"

Fritz closed his eyes. He really wanted to go to bed. How did a night of cuddling and talking turn into him reliving one of his worst nightmares? _What wound, indeed_?

"Someone drove a wooden stake through her heart," he said, his voice flat.

Brenda gasped. "Tell me you are kiddin'. Why would anyone do that?"

Fritz wanted to push her off the couch for asking such a stupid question.

"I don't know, Brenda," he said sarcastically. "Put the pieces together, you're the world-famous investigator. Why did someone stake her?"

"But wait," she fumbled. "That clearly wasn't Maeve you saw at the bar, if her body was found a couple of days later, and she had been dead for six months. So the strange girl you saw wasn't her after all!" She sounded triumphant, like she had solved an important problem for Fritz.

"You are the one who doesn't believe in coincidences, . he said. "What are the chances that I run into a girl who looks exactly like Maeve in a tiny town a thousand miles from home, and Maeve's remains are found in the same small town a couple days later? Really, Brenda. Besides, I looked at the crime scene photos taken when they found her body. The corpse was wearing the exact same clothes as Maeve was the night before." He stared at her, wondering what argument she would come up with next.

Brenda held out her hands in surrender. "Okay, Fritz, I told you I wouldn't laugh at you. So come clean. Why don't you tell me what you _think_ you saw?" Fritz noticed her emphasis on the word "think."

I _know_ what I saw, Brenda, and I'll tell you how I put the pieces together. That man wasn't happy that I recognized Maeve. He wanted to kill me but Maeve convinced him otherwise. And for her troubles, she ended up with a stake in her chest."

"Why—"

He wasn't going to dance around the obvious any longer. "A stake through the heart is, according to legend, the only way to kill a vampire. My guess is when you stake a vampire, they don't go poof or turn to goo like in the movies. They just decay at a rapid rate, because they are technically already dead."

"So," Brenda said slowly, "you are saying Maeve was a …"

"…vampire. Yes I am." He looked at her defiantly, daring her to say something sarcastic or biting. After chewing her lip for a moment, she spoke.

"Okay then. That is quite a story, Fritz." She yawned and looked at her watch. "For heaven's sake, it's two in the mornin'!" She stood up. "I think it's time for bed, don't you?" She headed toward the bedroom.

_I share this terrible thing with her and she acts like it's nothing?_ Fritz was stunned. He grabbed her by the elbow and spun her around. "That's it? I tell you this incredibly dark story and you just yawn? I tell you I think I met a vampire and you announce bedtime? What's up with that?"

She looked down at where his hand held her arm, and Fritz was reminded of Maeve's iron grip, and the bruises that lasted for days afterwards. He let go of her. "I get it, Fritz," she said. "It was one of those cases that had stuff in it no one could explain. And I appreciate you openin' up to me and tellin' me about it, I really do."

"No, no, no, you don't get it, Brenda," he moaned and put his s on his head, suddenly so tired he could barely stand up. "It's more than about vampires. That's not the point of the story. That's not what haunts me."

"Than what is?" _How can she be so brilliant and so obtuse?_

"I got her killed!" Fritz barked, and Brenda stepped backwards, startled. "I recognized her and they, those men, put a stake through her heart. It's my fault she's dead." He shivered, another wave of guilt slamming into him. _I couldn't find you when you were taken, and then when I did find you, I got you killed. Oh Maeve, I'm so sorry._

Brenda regained her composure and reached out to lay her hand on his shoulder. "You didn't get her killed, Fritzy, don't you go around thinkin' that," she said tenderly, reading his mind. "She was already dead long before you saw her in that bar. You just helped end her misery." And then she turned around and headed into the bedroom.

He stared at the spot where she had stood. _She understood, she understood the whole time,_ he thought, amazed. _Brenda knows she was a vampire. And she's right._ Maeve had been dead for quite awhile. The pale, blank girl he saw in the bar was a poor imitation of the vibrant readhead he had known in DC.

Fritz slowly walked around the room and turned off the lights, one by one, and joined his wife in bed. He hoped that he wouldn't be visited by images of Maeve as her vampire self in his dreams tonight like he had been for years. Like Maeve, he believed he deserved a little peace.

**THE END**

_**You know, this is the first story I've ever written where I'm not sure I want feedback. It's not my best work, and I'm afraid someone will tell me to post this as a Closer/True Blood crossover lol. So you just might be off the hook for this one.**_


End file.
